Phoenix | S.R.

Ch. 4 | Forethought

Summary: Reader packs an apartment, goes back to work, and confides in a friend.

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When authors intend to depict tragedy, why is it that they resort to describing the silence? They speak of the emptiness rather than the reality that is co-existing with grief. They speak of tick-tick-ticking clocks like it is the only thing to be heard. But that simply isn't true of the world as it was without him.

If I could find the silence, things would be better. But there was always something to be heard. The sound of soft footsteps in the apartment above Apartment 23. The muted chirping of the birds through the moderately thick glass of his windows. The scratch of scuffed floorboards as I dragged boxes of poorly packed items that were all too familiar for comfort.

The choked sobs from my mouth as I gripped his shirt with so much force I honestly thought I might tear it in two.

"Hey, it's Derek," I heard from down the hall as the door creaked open, "Sorry I'm late."

I didn't respond because I knew that he'd find me here in due time. The apartment wasn't very big, and my crying was loud enough that the neighbors could probably hear me. The sounds were still there, ever-present and always reminding me that the world went on without him.

"(Y/n)?" he called again before he found me.

Derek poked his head into the room and spotted me as I was; on my knees and face stained with petechiae and newly born tears. He found me there, kneeling on the floor of a dead man's apartment and wondering why no one warned me this could happen. When I'd agreed to be his emergency contact on his lease, I never could've imagined this. No one ever talks about after the emergency. There was no way of me knowing what would happen.

What happens, by the way, is that you become the person responsible for collecting their belongings and moving them out. You are the marshal responsible for the eviction of the person you loved, not one month after they stopped paying.

Because the world went on without him.

Derek had agreed to help me pack Spencer's things, knowing that this wasn't the kind of thing anyone is intended to do alone. I hoped that he might be able to distract me from what it would be like to be confronted with his belongings, his home, his life, just as he had left it. But even then, it wasn't comforting because he had planned for the possible end. There was no rotten food in the fridge, and his fish tank sat drained and devoid of any little creatures.

Spencer knew that he might die when he left that day. But he left, anyway.

Derek's approach was steady and calm. He was, as always, a study rock among the rubble. He'd known his job for the day was less related to packing and more to comforting the disaster of a girl trying to make sense of what Spencer had left behind.

"Hey, pretty girl," he joked, "What's wrong?"

I rolled my eyes at both the nickname and the question. We'd both known that anyone calling me pretty at the moment - with snot smeared over my upper lip and swollen eyes - was surely full of shit.

"You know, the usual," I said with a smile while simultaneously wiping tears on my sleeve without letting go of the pink shirt in my hands.

"What's going on?"

A question that we both knew the answer to in the general sense. But I knew he'd wanted to know more about the exact circumstances that had led to me crying over a t-shirt. I sighed because the answer was complicated. I hadn't wanted him to feel bad about being late, but it really had ended up being the worst possible timing.